UNLEARNING GOD: How Unbelieving Helped Me Believe

IN STORES SEPTEMBER 25, 2018
America’s favorite Quaker storyteller explores the terrain of faith and doubt as shaped by family, church, and young love, finding his way to a less convenient but fully formed adult spirituality.

Philip Gulley

Phil Gulley is a pastor at Fairfield Friends Meeting in Camby, Indiana, near Indianapolis. He lives in the nearby town of Danville with his wife Joan and their two dogs, Ruby and Jack. They have two sons, and one granddaughter, Madeline, who rules the roost.

A GATHERING IN HOPE

Engaging Presentations

Several times a month, Philip ventures from his Indiana home to tell stories, lead workshops, and discuss spirituality. Keep an eye on Phil’s schedule to see if he’s headed your way. If he isn’t, we invite you to extend an invitation to visit your church, college, or community.

Life Lessons

We have more entertainment than ever before, and more depression. Our opportunities seem infinite, but we feel weighed down with burdens. We have thousands of years of spiritual traditions to help guide and energize our lives, but too often feel spiritually listless. We all need help for our journey. May our GraceTalk messages bring you hope, insight, and deep joy.

Find YOUR way to GRACE.

Welcome to GraceTalks

In a closet in my office is a high stack of paper, copies of every sermon I’ve ever given. I kept them on the advice of an elderly pastor who told me, when I first began preaching, that I should save my sermons and repeat them every three years, which he surmised was the working memory of the average congregant. Occasionally, when bored, I’ll reach into the stack, pull out a sermon, and read it, in order to see whether it is still fresh. It seldom is. What I discover instead is that I have moved on, that my experiences have caused me to think differently about God. And not just differently about God, but differently about what it means to be human, what it means to love, and what it means to believe.

The messages in this website reflect that evolution. I cheerfully jettison one year something I swore was true the year before. I suspect you have done the same. That is, if you have given faith any thought, which I suspect you have, since you’re visiting this website.

I invite you to sign up for the weekly messages I deliver at Fairfield Friends Meeting. There’s no cost, though a donation to defray the expense of maintaining a website is always appreciated. But whether you contribute or not, I hope the messages you read expand your mind, life, and spirit. For I believe God is honored not by the tired repetition of yesterday’s dogma, but by our efforts to be a new creation in a changed world. With that hope, I welcome you to this site.

Our search and need for intimacy becomes a powerful force in our young adulthood. When most people hear the word intimacy, they immediately think of sex. But intimacy is more than that. Intimacy is also a tenderness for, a closeness with, an affection for another. …

The church is most like Jesus not when it goes along with the world to get along with the world, but when it rebels, when it wakes us up, when it stirs the conscience, when it challenges the schemes and systems that grind people to …

His vision of Christianity is grounded, gripping, and filled with uncommon sense.

Father Richard Rohr

In our ever-changing world, Gulley’s book is much needed. An important book for any person of faith.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

His book is a treasure trove of practical wisdom about what it means to bear witness to our hope for a better world.

Parker J. Palmer, author of HEALING THE HEART OF DEMOCRACY

Why are thousands of ministers not saying what Philip Gulley says so well!! His vision of Christianity is grounded, gripping, and filled with uncommon sense. He is building bridges instead of boundaries, and such wisdo…

Father Richard Rohr

Gulley puts the Christ back in Christian. This manifesto is a call not just to worship Jesus, but to follow him. It asks the daring question, “What if Christians actually began to take their Christ seriously?” The answer…

Shane Claiborne, bestselling author of The Irresistible Revolution

Every serious Christian ought to read this book, ponder it, wrestle with it, but above all, be grateful for its’ presence in today’s urgent conversation about what we are becoming as a people of God.

Phyllis Tickle, author of THE GREAT EMERGENCE

Like most realistic lovers, Gulley knows that as long as churches are composed of human beings, churches will be flawed. Yet this truth does not cloud his central vision: that Christianity is about following Jesus, not w…

Barbara Brown Taylor

Philip Gulley separates wheat from chaff, experience from explanation and purpose from function in this book. He calls the Jesus message into a new vision – one that has both power and integrity.

John Shelby Spong, author of Eternal Life: A New Vision

Filled with memorable, insightful and revealing stories. I recommend it.

Marcus Borg, author of The First Christmas

No one raises provocative questions about Christianity more kindly than Philip Gulley. In an age of shouting, Gulley gently points out the flaws in the church while opening ways to practice Christian spirituality with …

A program of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) supporting grassroots projects for economic development and offering educational materials for the study of the lives of the poor, the lives of the rich, and the spiritual meaning of both.

A non-profit ministry that works to encourage the nonviolent transformation of conflict in relationships in homes, workplaces, schools, churches, and throughout the world. They offer workshops, clinics and training programs designed to address conflict r